Inventory

Agent Best Practices

Applies to: Inventory

When installed on devices on your network, the Spiceworks Agent connects to your Desktop app using HTTPS. In fact, these same principals also apply to

the Spiceworks mobile apps for iOS and Android

accessing Spiceworks using a browser from other workstations or servers on your network(s)

setting up Remote Sites

It is important to configure your agents properly to ensure they can consistently connect to your Desktop app. How you do this is dependent
on your particular environment.

Troubleshooting? Check out this guide on troubleshooting agent connectivity problems.

Once you’re ready to deploy agent to all of your devices, the information here will help you determine the best hostname/IP and port combination to use when deploying the agent via command line. To read
more about agent deployment see this article.

Single site, internal only

In this case, all of your agent devices are on the same network with the server where Spiceworks Desktop is installed.

Your agents should be configured to connect to the Desktop server using the Desktop server’s HTTPS port, and you can use any of the following:

IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.12), but only if the Desktop server has a static IP address

DNS hostname (e.g. serverA)

DNS fully qualified domain name (e.g. serverA.mydomain.com)

Tip: Agent devices using a DNS hostname or FQDN? Be sure to check your DNS server’s forward lookup zone to ensure there is an address record (“A” or “AAAA”) with the correct current IP address of the Spiceworks
Desktop app server.

Multi-site, VPN network

In this case, you have agent devices on remote networks, but the networks are connected via a point-to-point VPN (typically an “always up” link established between firewalls) or the agent devices are running VPN client
software that
connects the agent device to the local network where your Spiceworks Desktop app server is running.

Your agents should be configured to connect to the Desktop server using the Desktop server’s HTTPS port, and you can use any of the following:

IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.12), only if the Desktop server has a static IP address

DNS fully qualified domain name (e.g. serverA.mydomain.com)

Tip: Agent devices using a DNS FQDN? Be sure to check your DNS server’s forward lookup zone to ensure there is an address record (“A” or “AAAA”) with the correct current IP address of the Spiceworks Desktop app server.

Multi-site, external routing

In this case, agent devices are off-network and do not connect back via VPN to the network where your Spiceworks Desktop app is running. To allow agent devices to connect, you’ll need to “poke a hole” through your network’s
external firewall, allowing off-network agents to connect to your Desktop server from the internet.

Note: Spiceworks recommends using only the above methods (internal only and VPN) for maximum security.

Your agents should be configured to connect to the Desktop server using your network’s:

fully qualified domain name (e.g. remote.mydomain.com)

static IP address (e.g. 107.34.183.73, only if you have a static IP address assigned by your ISP)

Firewall configuration

You’ll need to configure your external firewall to forward the inbound HTTPS requests from agents. Set up a “port forwarding” rule on the firewall, with ports of your choosing. In the above example you would configure
the agent devices to connect using port 443. The external firewall’s rules would forward those HTTPS requests on port 443 to the internal IP address (or hostname) of the Spiceworks Desktop app server on port 443.

Alternate port firewall configuration

Let’s look at a more complex example:

Spiceworks Desktop app server HTTPS port: 9676

External firewall receiving HTTPS requests on port: 4443

In this advanced example, you would setup your agent devices to connect to the external firewall on port 4443. Then setup a port forwarding rule on the external firewall to direct inbound HTTPS requests on port 4443
to the internal IP address or hostname of the Spiceworks Desktop app server on port 9676.